This invention addresses the receiver design for digital communication systems employing high-order modulation schemes and operating in highly temporally dispersive channels. As an example, this invention has been applied to the EDGE standard (“Digital Cellular Communication System (Phase 2+) (GSM 05.01–GSM 05.05 version 8.4.0 Release 1999)”). The EDGE standard is built on the existing GSM standard, using the same time-division multiple access (TDMA) frame structure. EDGE uses 8-PSK (Phase-shift keying) modulation, which is a high-order modulation that provides for high-data-rate services. In 8-PSK modulation, three information bits are conveyed per symbol by modulating the carrier by one of eight possible phases.
A wireless channel is often temporally dispersive. In other words, after a signal is transmitted, a system will receive multiple copies of that signal with different channel gains at various points in time. This time dispersion in the channel causes inter-symbol interference (ISI) which degrades the performance of the system. FIG. 1 shows a prior art example of a multipath channel profile. The main signal cursor 102 is followed in time by post-cursors 104, 106, 108, and 110.
To combat the effects of ISI at the receiver, many different types of equalization techniques can be used. One popular equalization technique uses a Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE). The DFE cancels the extraneous multipath components to eliminate the deleterious effects of ISI. A DFE is relatively simple to implement and performs well under certain known circumstances. The performance of the DFE depends heavily on the characteristics of the channel. A DFE typically performs well over a minimum-phase channel, where the channel response has little energy in its pre-cursors, and its post-cursor energy decays with time. A DFE typically consists of a feed-forward filter (FFF) and a feedback filter (FBF). The FFF is used to help transform the channel into such a minimum-phase channel. Methods for computing the coefficients of the FFF and FBF (based upon channel estimates) are well known. See, e.g., N. Al-Dhahir and J. M. Cioffi, “Fast Computation of Channel-Estimate Based Equalizers in Packet Data Transmission,” IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 43, pp. 2462–2473, November 1995, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Certain advantages of a DFE include good performance with relatively low complexity. Certain disadvantages include, but are not limited to: (1) Error propagation—i.e., once an error is made, that error is fed back and propagated into future symbol decisions. (2) Sub-optimum performance—i.e., instead of capturing multipath energy in the channel, the DFE instead cancels out this energy. (3) Hard decision output—i.e., a DFE makes a decision on the transmitted symbol without providing any information associated with the reliability of that decision.
Other more complex equalization techniques utilize the multipath energy from the received signal, rather than trying to cancel the energy. Such equalizers include, but are not limited to, MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) and MAP (Maximum-A-Posterori) Estimation. These non-linear equalization techniques make a determination as to the most likely transmitted symbols, based upon all of the available information to the receiver. The MLSE is the optimum sequence estimator over a finite channel response. The complexity of the MLSE equalizer grows exponentially with the channel response duration, and the equalizer produces hard symbol decisions. The MAP equalizer operates in a similar fashion to the MLSE equalizer but provides soft symbol decisions. The primary disadvantage of the MAP equalizer is complexity. Hence, while these example equalizers are better at handling problematic signals, their implementations can prove to be very complex and expensive for systems using high-order modulation, such as the EDGE system. See G. David Forney. Jr., “Maximum-Likelihood Sequence Estimation of Digital Sequences in the Presence of Intersymbol Interference,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 18, pp. 363–377, May 1972; J. G. Proakis, “Digital Communications,” (3rd edition) New York; McGraw-Hill, 1995. The contents of both the foregoing references are incorporated herein by reference.
The complexity of the MLSE and MAP equalizers, implemented using the known Viterbi algorithm (or the like), is exponentially proportional to the memory of the channel. In particular, the number of states required in the MLSE or MAP equalizer is given by ML, where M is the size of the symbol alphabet and L is the memory of the channel in symbols. Moreover, the use of 8PSK modulation in the EDGE system makes the complexity of the MLSE and MAP equalizers very large for channels with moderate delay spreads. Note that different channel models exist for different types of terrain and are used to quantify receiver sensitivity in the GSM standard. For example, the Hilly Terrain (HT) channel model has a profile that spans more than five symbols and would therefore require an MLSE or MAP equalizer with 32,768 states to achieve acceptable performance.
Techniques to reduce the number of states of the MLSE have been proposed. See, e.g., Alexandra Duel-Hallen and Chris Heegard, “Delayed decision-feedback sequence estimation,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 37, no. 5, p. 428–436, May 1989; M. Vedat Eyboglu and Shahid U. Qureshi, “Reduced-state sequence estimation with set partitioning and decision feedback,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 13–20, January 1988. Under these techniques, a subset of the full state space is chosen as the state space, and a DFE is implemented on every state of the trellis (i.e., as shown in a state space diagram). However, the complexity of computing the path metric values in these algorithms is still very large for channels with a large delay spread.
Accordingly, what is needed in the field of the art is an equalizer device that provides for a simpler implementation, such as a DFE, but which provides the improved performance characteristics of a more complex equalizer, such as an MLSE or MAP. The equalizer should be generally applicable to all digital communication systems but provide particular advantage to coded systems using higher-order modulation schemes.